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Speaking the Truth in Love

An OCPAC Facebook reader responded to a post regarding the way Target stores are promoting “gay pride” month. Her comment is followed by a noteworthy response from a pastor in Norman:

Megan: Its people like you that make me ashamed to be from Oklahoma. I don’t care how young or how old someone is, they have the right to choose what they want to choose. If you don’t like it, don’t wear it, its as simple as that. But until you can say 100% that you are “sin” free, don’t judge others on their life choices. And don’t even get me started with throwing the !@##$%@ Bible quotes around. Not everyone is religious, or the same religion. Our country should not be ran based on a mythical book!! I’m not going to apologize for my religious views. “God is man” “Man created women” just another way to control women in my opinion. But this isn’t solely about the Bible, its about using biblical bs to justify why we as people cannot allow others to be themselves, even if it means we don’t agree. If you see someone in public wearing some ugly colored fedora, you wouldn’t freak out on them would you? Bash them for being them…you would simply look the other way and possibly think to yourself “to each his own” so why can’t we do that with gays? Just because someone doesn’t think the way you do, doesn’t make them wrong

Pastor Mike: Megan, I hope that you will view this response as an attempt to help you see truth rather than as a fight. Hard to communicate tone in print. But let me try. First, simply because someone strongly advocates a position and asserts that others are wrong doesn’t mean that the basis of their assertion is their own authority. Christians believe that what they believe is right, not simply because they believe it, but because they are submitting to a criterion for determining truth that is bigger than themselves and their own opinion. Your rebuke of Bible-believing Christians, on the other hand, is based on nothing other than your declaration that people have a “right” to believe whatever they want. On what do you base that assertion? Merely on what you think? It seems that the one who is assuming everyone should believe as she does based simply on what she thinks is you, not they. Second, how do you know that homosexuality is simply what people “are?” I know that is what the homosexual advocates assert, but there is no proof of it, and there is much proof to the contrary. Homosexuals and their self-proclaimed advocates like to disparage therapy that reverses homosexual urges, but I know of several people who would testify that their lives have changed for the better since they have been cured of their homosexuality through therapy. There are literally thousands of them, and one never hears about it because their testimony doesn’t fit the secular leftist narrative which dominates the media. You might not like to hear that, but if you are intellectually honest (and I hope you are), you have to ask, “How do I explain the in-person experience and testimony of this large group of people?” Homosexuality was once categorized as a psychological pathology, and the change in this was not due to any scientific research, but to a corruption of the psychological establishment and their embracing of a leftist ideology. The Christian view of homosexuality is not held simply because it happens to be someone’s view, but because it is what God has revealed to be true and how He has created things to be. Second, it is not simply a matter of what people want to believe and do. What is socially acceptable has to do with how it affects others. Target is promoting participation in and celebration of a homosexual lifestyle to children, who typically don’t have the maturity or critical thinking skills to discern error when they see or hear it. [Don’t be offended, but you are an example.] The truth is that, although the evil of homosexuality is based on God’s expressed design and intention, one doesn’t need to reference the Bible to know that homosexual lifestyle is harmful to those who engage in it. Homosexuals have many times the suicide rate of heterosexuals. Homosexuals get all kinds of exotic diseases—AIDS is just the tip of the iceberg—because of perforation of the colon from homosexual sexual activity and the invasion of exotic intestinal bacteria into the bloodstream as a result, a fact about which one never hears because it is covered up or ignored by a malfeasant media. But one doesn’t even need to know these facts to look at men and women and determine, just from obvious biology, that homosexuality is not in accord with “how the plumbing works.” It is as much a perversion as is having sex with a tree using a knothole. Please excuse my graphic imagery, but it is necessary to get across the truth to people who think in terms of ivory tower pseudo-moral concepts, such as that all sexual activity is neutral and acceptable. Reality, and its consequences, are more visceral than that.

My overall point is this, Megan. There is an absolute truth. Truth is not simply what each person determines it to be. Everyone knows this instinctively because no sane person would jump off a building assuming that the law of gravity only works if they believe that it does. Now, you can disbelieve in God or the Bible if you want; no one can force you to believe. No one on this forum is trying to force you or anyone else to. What we are trying to do is convince people of the truth, because when people don’t conform their lives to the truth, they suffer bad, sometimes horrible, consequences. Furthermore, we want to call out and condemn public influences, especially of children, toward false and harmful ideas. All this is motivated by love for people, not arrogance or intolerance. In fact, intolerance of evil is a good thing. You must believe that or you would not have indicated your intolerance of Bible-believing Christians asserting their beliefs, which apparently you believe is wrong, on this forum. But my real question has to do with what you call “judging.” There are different kinds of judgment. Non-Christians often use a misunderstanding of this as a cudgel to bash Christians, the unstated assumption being that any condemnation of any belief, or, often, any action, is “judging” and therefore wrong. Now, it doesn’t take much thought to see that this is nonsense. If true, it would rule out any disapproval of any conduct whatsoever, and rule out law itself. Do you think it is wrong to point out that someone raping you would be wrong? Of course not! But didn’t Jesus teach, “Judge not, that ye be not judged”? Yes, but what He meant by “judging” needs to be understood, as does all communication, in its context. A reading of the whole passage clearly shows that what Jesus meant is that rank-and-file people (as distinct from civil authorities), are not to mete out “punishment” for wrongdoing, but to leave that to God and His delegated representatives. But it is absurd and impossible to think that recognizing evil as such and calling it what it is is wrong. In fact, those who condemn this are doing the very thing they are condemning. The very idea is self-contradictory. Moreover, Jesus taught that we “must” discern evil and distinguish it from good. If everyone is left to decide for himself what is good and what is bad, then there is no such thing as objective good and evil, no objective morals, and thus (and this is what those who unthinkingly say the things you have fail to realize) no basis for civil society itself. I urge you to think on these things. I believe that, if you allow yourself to do so, and not merely argue emotionally, you will see the truth of these things. But my greatest hope is that you will understand that we all, including all of us dialoguing on this page, have broken God’s law and are subject to the consequences. Not wanting to believe it doesn’t make it not so. You call the Bible a “mythical book” filled with “bs.” But have you ever really investigated the truth claims of the Bible about itself and about God, and the evidence for them? I would almost guarantee that you have not. Rather, you are simply parroting what you have heard others say. Nevertheless, I know that you know that there is a God, and that you are accountable to Him. There is One who came to make that God known and to provide forgiveness, healing, and real life to those who will believe in and submit to Him, and His name is Jesus Christ. I pray that you will seek and find Him, not because I want to be right, but because I love you. I wish you the best.